#magnus writes

[magnus-sm-writes]

WIP Intro: Plastic Fangs

Paranormal Literary Fiction / Drafting / Playlist / Pinterest

I finished writing the original “Plastic Fangs” short story early this year. I think in the wrap-up post I wrote about it that I said Marcellus and Abel are two of my favorite characters I’ve written for as of late, and I still completely agree with that. Specifically with Marcellus. He’s just a strange little guy who loves stealing diaries, eavesdropping on conversations, and watching “talkies” (because he was a kid when silent movies were still a thing). I definitely gave him my “weird little man” syndrome. 

My beta readers (Shini-san and my husband Trystan) both loved Marcellus as a character and lamented that the story was, well, a short story. Both straight-up told me that they would love if “Plastic Fangs” were novelized.

So here we are. Novelizing “Plastic Fangs” in time for spooky season!

WHAT

Plastic Fangs follows Marcellus, a sixty-something vampire living his best life in the eighties. Despite technically being a fledgling himself, he meets the fledgling vampire Abel and takes him beneath his wing to show him the ways of vampirism. 

While simple to boil down to an elevator pitch, I think what really shines here are the characters. I already mentioned that Marcellus is a little freak, but Abel matches his freak pretty well. Abel hasn’t had enough time to develop interests as deep or varied as normal as other vampires, considering he’s in his early twenties. Despite that, he’s still a deeply strange person.

The plan is to begin with a first chapter similar to the original short story, then build on from there. Marcellus and Abel go on a gay vampire road trip from state to state as Marcellus teaches Abel how to live as a creature of the night.

I’m expecting a lot of references to other vampire media. Dracula and Interview with the Vampire, because Marcellus loves vampire media and consumes it regularly. And of course, references to some of my favorite vampire stuff: My Chemical Romance, My Babysitter’s a Vampire, my own vampire work Night Bite, What We Do in the Shadows. That sort of vibe. I love vampires, so it’ll be easy for me to make silly references to them. 

THEMES

Plastic Fangs, like most other works of vampire fiction, has a large focus on themes of otherness, immortality, and yearning. So much yearning. 

CHARACTERS

(via ElenaA's Windswept OC Maker)

Marcellus

There isn’t much to say about Marcellus that I haven’t already said. If he were human, he would be in his mid-sixties. He’s a young enough vampire that he’s still technically a fledgling. (Vampires are considered fledglings until they reach a hundred years of vampirism.) 

Marcellus is passionate about “following the rules” as he was taught. There’s a certain etiquette to vampirism and feeding that Marcellus thinks is respectful. He’s determined to teach Abel these rules.

In the first draft of the short story, Marcellus was your typical broody vampire. He had a lot of angst about his transformation. However, I found it a lot more compelling if Marcellus enjoyed vampirism and had a funky fresh time with it. So Marcellus became the eccentric little freak he is now. 

Plastic Fangs (the novel) expands on Marcellus’ short story characterization. He’s just as delighted by the modern world (waxing poetic on how much he loves disco balls), just as nosy (frequent eavesdropping on people in motel rooms, “glass on the wall” style), and just as happy to be alive as he is in the short story; he just gets more time to enjoy it.

Abel

Abel is a fledgling vampire. He’s been a vampire for less than two years. The person who turned him did it on a whim and abandoned him. Until he met Marcellus, he hadn’t established a solid relationship with another vampire. He didn’t get to learn from a vampiric master like Marcellus did. He’s making up for lost time now.

I think Abel is just as fun of a character as Marcellus is. We aren’t as close to him, since Plastic Fangs is told from Marcellus’ point of view, but we do get to see a lot of Abel’s character in it. Abel fully enjoys indulging in nightlife. He does some fun things with makeup, in eighties punk fashion, and is wearing these obnoxiously long fake nails when we first meet him. 

Abel is a lot angstier about vampirism than Marcellus. He hasn’t had a lot of time to process his vampirism, and he didn’t get to choose it like Marcellus did. It’s pretty difficult for him. Abel is also a lot closer to everything that happened to him during his human life, so he has a lot more feelings to work through. 

THEATRE TROUPE

Marcellus’s introduction to vampirism was a theatre troupe that rolled through Provincetown. He went to see them perform for the first time and was so smitten he spent all his money returning every night. They welcomed him happily. It wasn’t until he’d been with them for a couple months when the members revealed that they were vampires.

The theatre troupe are often mentioned, but we don’t get to meet them face to face until we’re about halfway through the book. The troupe is composed of a rotating cast of characters. When we meet them, the group consists of: Julius (he/him), Cleopatra (she/her), Smythe (she/her), Mary (they/them), Calliope (she/they), and Ptolemy (it/its). We get mentions of other members offhandedly.

These vampires are all considered “elders” in the context of the story, though they are nowhere near considered elders in the counsels. The only ones who would be considered actual elders in the vampiric community are Ptolemy and Cleopatra, and even then, they don’t really follow the “old ways”. 

Julius

Julius is Marcellus’ former master/mentor. He isn’t an elder vampire by any means, but he’s old enough to have experienced the barbaric “old ways” of vampirism, and stands firmly against them. Julius is overdramatic, enthusiastic, and exactly Marcellus’ type. 

He doesn’t often create spawn, having only three (Marcellus included). Julius is close with all of his spawns, calling and sending mail. He has high standards for vampirism that he’s passed onto Marcellus. 

Their relationship is really sweet, honestly. I love how much they care about each other. From Marcellus’ perspective, Julius is his first love. Julius has great respect for how much Marcellus cares about other people and that Marcellus adopted his teachings. Meeting Abel thrills Julius; he’s overjoyed that one of his spawn is willing to take in a fledgling that isn’t theirs.

EXCERPT

“You don’t seem particularly sociable.” Abel weaves around a tree, glances back playfully. In the darkness, he looks more like a vampire than Marcellus. His long nails and contact lenses aren’t noticeable once the branches above block out the cloud-darkened sky. The swish of his hair and his cape speaks more to vampirism. He doesn’t seem to have problems speaking around the ridiculous plastic fangs.

TAGLIST

@pigeonwrites, @cwritesfiction

Ask to be added to the taglist, my spooky friends!

[bernard-the-rabbit]

Oh alice..you would have loved Tim pls don't end up like him <3

[crispyliza]

Fanfiction in the late 2000s-early 2010s was wild bc you'd find a beautifully written story with the most compelling heart-wrenching plot you've ever seen and the author's note would be like:

Author with a username like ~SasukesWaifuxD~ : Ohayo gozaimasu! ↖(^▽^)↗, I'm sowwy it took me so long to update (๑•́_•̀๑)

tsundere twink from their fic : It was about damn time you idiot (눈‸눈)

~SasukesWaifuxD~ : Hey now! It's not my fault the plot bunnies kept wunning away fwom me (╥﹏╥)

tsundere twink: W-watever, it's not like I missed you or anything (💢,,>﹏<,,) b-baka!

[lo-andbehold]

A callout post (it’s me I’m calling myself out)

[my-heart-of-heart]

So normal about Jon being like I don’t remember what you looked like but the man who let you die is going to suffer for what he did to you. If only Sasha coulda seen that.

So normal about Jon being like you died hating me and wanting me dead but I’m still gonna make sure this man knows I’m ending him in your name. Sure wish Tim coulda seen that.

So normal about the fact that everyone believed Jon was losing his humanity but no one got to see the ways his love and compassion for the people he lost or who hurt him drove him to that final moment.

So normal about the fact that even after everything Jonah’s done to Jon, the only person he never thinks to get justice for is himself.

[i-eat-bugs-and-dirt]

JONATHAN SIMS PRIEST AU! FORCED CONFESSIONS! PEOPLE BEING FORCED TO RELIVE THEIR CONFESSED SINS IN THEIR DREAMS OVER AND OVER AGAIN!!! RELIGIOUS GUILT MARTIN!! THE FEAR ENTITIES SOMEHOW LINKED TO THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS! IM GOING INSANE!

[jaybirdscoffee]

reblog if you want a photographer to capture you diversing all over the place

[thepunkmuppet]

my girl celia really said have you ever heard of this one show it’s called the magnus archives and it’s a podcast distributed by rusty quill and licensed under a creative commo-

[podcast-hemocytoblast]

What if when Michael got Distortioned he/they/it/(?) had just kept showing up to work? Imagine Gertrude comes into the archives and finds a bunch of paperwork filled out in yellow highlighter and folded into impossible shapes, and then Michael-Distortion just walks into the room door-style and sits down at his work computer so it can email Gertrude a phishing scam.

[whisperingphantasm]

Jonathan Sims has got to be the only character who could try to become God in order to kill everyone on Earth and still have me believing in his fundamental goodness as a person.

[thetruecthulhu9]

Hey anyone want to be crushed by the reality that in stopping the unknowing Jon became unknown to everything around him. He stops being Jon and becomes The Archivist and the only person who acknowledges that there's anything left of the person he was is Martin.

Nikola failed a doomed ritual but it still made the Archivist a Stranger

[magnus-sm-writes]

“Don’t mock me. I’ll drop you off in the desert. People die out here.”  “Like the Donner party,” Quincy says. Otto snorts. “He wants to go to Donner Lake,” he says, glancing at the camera. When Quincy looks at Otto’s sunglasses through the viewfinder, he can see the reflection of himself recording Otto in them, and squints to try seeing the reflection of the reflection in the viewfinder. “If ghosts exist, that place is hella haunted.” The internal struggle is very external on Otto’s face today. Probably because they’ve been on the road for a solid ten hours, and Otto’s almost done with his driving shift. Their motel is waiting for them when they get to Vegas. “I can’t argue with that,” Otto says at last.

I'm letting Quincy and Otto go to Donner Lake because I couldn't when I went on vacation in California. (Quincy just really likes places where people died in dramatic, painful ways.)

Ask to be added to the (Demon) Hunting for Love taglist!

[barbiediamondcastleofficial]

I love jmart. What do you mean the tragic hero is a hopeless romantic and the poet is a realist. Incredible im on the floor

[crispyliza]

I've got you all figured out fanartists

[spiral-man]

There is some so insanely heartbreaking to me about Jonathan Sims and the way the statements were recorded. They were all originally handwritten which is such a very human thing, using your own flesh and blood write something down, just the amount of effort and emotion that goes into that. And then Jon had to digitize them using a tape recorder, definitely a lot less human as it’s now batteries and tape but still human enough since it’s using his voice. And now he’s fully inhuman, robotic, stuck in a computer, where there used to be blood and skin and bone there is now plastic and wires and a screen.

I’m currently studying funeral services and in my embalming textbook it talks about how one woman phrased it like “a dead body is an object, but it is an object unlike any other object, cannot be like any other object, because this object used to be alive” and I really like that, it feels comforting, it feels human. Jon doesn’t get this though, he was terrified of being inhuman and he doesn’t even get to be human in this “somewhere else” he doesn’t get to be an object that used to be alive, he is just an object, like a pencil that wrote down the original statements, or the tape recorder that used to record them, and now the computer.

[ash-tree-eyes]

Alright but i’m kind of obsessed with how the case from tmagp 23 uses the comments and likes under the posts as a form of horror. At first it seems like this is your standard internet experience of a post with a couple of likes and no one actually commenting, and the likes lessening the longer the thread goes on, like a normal series of posts where people stop reading halfway through. And then… when shit starts going down, suddenly the likes jump up from 13 to 34. The stay consistent, drop some more, and then climb until we get to 71. And suddenly, this isn’t typical anymore. The lack of comments turns from a normal internet thing to a different type of horror - the horror of an audience watching you, observing your life being consumed by things bigger than you. Suddenly, every horror you witness becomes fuel for the silent audience who will drink in your pain and do nothing. The worse things become, the more of them flock towards you.

And then finally, when you are finally being fully consumed by the horrors you summoned, they leave comments. They speak up.

They’re gone before you can plead for help. They’ve seen enough. They’ve taken what they wanted from you.

And doesn’t that sound like the habits of a certain fear entity we all know?